Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

VIDEO 

A friend of mine tells 
of an elderly priest he knew years ago
who, expressing caution about
the growth among Catholics 
of the Charismatic Movement, 
described the Holy Spirit as 
“one of the trickiest persons of the Trinity.”
Even those who might be more enthusiastic
about the charismatic renewal in Catholicism
would surely have to agree that the Spirit can be tricky.

Indeed, we might even see some similarity
between the Holy Spirit and those figures in folklore
that scholars refer to as “tricksters.”
In folktales, tricksters are sometimes gods,
like Loki in Norse mythology,
or animals of particular cunning,
like Brer Rabbit in African-American traditions
or the coyote in Native-American stories.
I suppose in contemporary American mythology
the most notable trickster would be Bart Simpson.
Tricksters like to stir the pot and create chaos,
to shake up the normal order of things
and mock the power of established authorities.
They are usually morally ambiguous troublemakers
who are depicted as causing mischief, 
but also as embodying freedom and creativity.
As the writer Lewis Hyde put it,
tricksters are boundary-crossers,
blurring distinctions between
“right and wrong, sacred and profane, 
clean and dirty, male and female, 
young and old, living and dead.”

Though I hesitate to push the comparison too far—
the Holy Spirit, after all, is not exactly Bart Simpson—
I do think that the Spirit plays in the Christian story
a role similar to the trickster in mythology and folklore.
The Spirit is a boundary-crosser and a troublemaker.
At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens are opened
and the Spirit descends like a dove,
crossing the boundary between heaven and earth,
between the divine and the human,
to manifest Jesus as God’s beloved Son
and send him forth 

on his troublemaking mission.
On the evening of that first Easter
Jesus breathes out the Spirit upon the disciples, 
crossing the boundary between 
the resurrected life that he now leads
and their fearful, huddled existence,
giving to them his troublemaking peace
and the power to share that peace with others.
On the day of Pentecost,
the Spirit once again crosses the boundary
between heaven and earth,
descending from the sky 
with “a noise like a strong driving wind”
and resting on the apostles in
“tongues as of fire.”
And in crossing the boundary 
of heaven and earth 
the Spirit also crosses boundaries
of culture and language,
as the apostles begin to speak to the crowd
gathered “from every nation under heaven”
in a Spirit-filled language
that each can hear and understand.
And the trouble that causes
is recounted in depth in the book of Acts.

We are told that the crowd 
on that day of Pentecost is, 
as so often when tricksters are at work, 
“confused.” 
People are supposed to stay
in their cultural and linguistic boxes,
but now the pot has been stirred,
the old categories and division are blurred.
This kind of boundary-crossing
is profoundly disorienting.
But at the same time, we are told,
the people in the crowd 
are not simply confused;
they are astounded and amazed,
because they are able to hear together, 
despite their differences,
of the mighty acts of God.

St. Paul assures us that our God
“is not the God of disorder 
but of peace” (1 Cor 14:33).

But he also tells us that 

“the peace of God… surpasses 

all understanding” (Phil 4:7),

and after the risen Christ 

wishes his disciples peace

he shows them his wounds,

the price of all his troublemaking.

So, what is for God power

might seem to us weakness,
what is for God wisdom
might seem to us foolishness,
and what is for God order
might seem to us 
disorder and chaos and trouble.

And this is perhaps most evident
in what is that tricky Spirit’s trickiest work:
the body of Christ that is the Church.
For the Spirit blows into the Church
the most unlikely assemblage of people,
from the four corners of the world
and from every race and language:
men and women,
rich and poor,
thinkers and doers,
morning people and nightowls,
athletes and couch potatoes,
city-dwellers and suburbanites,
Republicans, Democrats, 
Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers,
Millennials, Zoomers,
and even Steelers fans…
all baptized into one body,
and all given to drink 
of the one tricky Spirit.

Sometimes it looks and sounds
like chaos and disorder.
When parishioners from churches
throughout the city of Baltimore
packed this Cathedral a few weeks ago
for the final listening session
of the Seek the City to Come process
it seemed at times to be pretty disorderly,
and pretty noisy,
as different voices from different places
spoke of their unique experiences
in their irreplaceable parishes.
But the hope we must bring 

to such listening
is that what will emerge 
from that welter of voices
is the voice of the one Spirit.
As with everything at every moment
in the long history of the Church,
we live in hope that it is
the boundary-crossing trickster Spirit 
who is at work;
we live in hope that it is
not simply a clamor 
of anxious human voices
but the sound of the strong 
driving wind of the Spirit 
that we hear;
we live in hope that, 
when all is said and done,
we will be able to see
different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,
different forms of service but the same Lord,
different workings but the same God
who works them all.

On this feast of Pentecost
let us pray that that trickiest Person
of the most Holy Trinity
would shine within our hearts,
breaking down the boundaries between us,
making us into the one body of Christ,
enlivened by the Spirit.
And may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

We human beings are very good at noticing differences.

We notice when someone’s way of talking is different,

or the kind of food they eat,

or their skin tone or hair texture,

or the shape of their nose or eyes.

And we divide the world up 

according to these differences,

creating a sense of “us” and “them,”

of insiders and outsiders, 

of the ordinary and the exotic.

People respond to these differences

in different ways.

Some see differences as superficial things 

that are best ignored 

and not spoken of in polite company—

potential sources of conflict to be overcome

by pretending that we really are all the same.

Others see differences as things so threatening

that those who are different 

must be controlled or excluded or eliminated,

by circling our wagons and locking our doors.

Still others see differences as generating 

a diversity so deep and identities so fixed

that we cannot possibly imagine the experience 

of those possessing a different identity,

much less form a single human family.

We human beings are good at noticing differences,

but we often don’t do difference well.

We either seek to ignore it or eliminate it,

or we make it so absolute 

that there is no possibility 

for unity across our differences.

But the Holy Spirit does difference differently.

The story of Pentecost depicts a large crowd 

gathered in Jerusalem from various lands—

all Jews, to be sure,

but still people of different languages and customs:

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and so forth.

But as the Spirit-filled apostles begin to speak to them,

proclaiming the Good News of the risen Christ,

each of them hears the words in his or her own language.

The story of Pentecost is sometimes seen 

against the backdrop of the story 

of the Tower of Babel,

in which humanity’s attempt 

to make a name for itself

by building a tower to the heavens

is thwarted by God’s confusion of their speech,

giving rise to different human languages

and furthering the divisions that sin creates.

But Pentecost is no mere reversal of Babel.

It is not the elimination 

of the diversity of human language,

but rather it is the giving of a Spirit 

that makes understanding possible

even in the face of difference,

a Spirit that accommodates itself to difference

even as it unites those whom difference might divide.

The Holy Spirit does difference differently.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us 

that the Spirit not only accommodates difference,

but creates difference through the giving of diverse gifts.

Some are given wisdom, others knowledge,

others gifts of healing, still others prophecy, 

and yet others discernment.

The one Spirit does not make us all the same,

but rather makes us each unique,

for we each receive the gifts of the Spirit in our own way

and manifest the gift of the Spirit in our own way.

And yet, Paul tells us,

while there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, 

it is the same Spirit who gives them;

while there are different forms of service, 

it is the same Lord who is being served;

while there are different works being worked,

it is the same God who is at work in us,

giving us a diversity of gifts 

that are to be used for the benefit of the whole:

“As a body is one though it has many parts,

and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,

so also Christ.”

The community called together by the Spirit 

into the one body of Christ

not by the erasure of difference,

but by the Spirit’s graceful guidance.

The Holy Spirit does difference differently.

And as we come to see how these differences flow forth

from the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God,

we can begin to see other differences—

differences of race and ethnicity,

differences of culture and experience— 

as being likewise rooted in God’s wise providence.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that God 

could have created a world of sameness,

a world with only one kind of thing in it.

He notes that such a world 

might have had less conflict in it,

since difference can indeed be a source of conflict—

a world with only lions or only lambs 

is a lot less bloody

than one with both lions and lambs.

But a world without variety and difference

is also an impoverished world:

would you really want a world 

without either lions or lambs?

According to St. Thomas,

a world that encompasses difference 

better reflects the infinite goodness 

and perfection of God.

And a church that encompasses difference—

the differing gifts of the Spirit

as well as the providential differences 

of ethnicity, culture, race, and experience—

better reflects the reality of Christ,

of whose body we are members.

The Spirit does difference differently,

neither seeing it as a threat,

nor ignoring its reality,

nor letting it eclipse our common identity

as those who have been given to drink 

of the one Spirit.

Through the power of the Spirit

the risen Jesus steps through our locked doors

and speaks to us the word he spoke

to the disciples in the upper room:

Peace.

In the midst of a world 

in which difference 

often generates conflict

or is seen as a threat,

he gives us through the Spirit 

the gift of his peace,

calling us to embody that peace:

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

May God’s Spirit accompany us as we go forth,

so that we may be for the world 

the peace he has spoken to us,

and may God have mercy on us all. 

Pentecost (Twelfth Sunday in Corona Time)

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

“He breathed on them and said to them,
‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
The Spirit of life, whose very name means “breath,”
is given by means of breath from the risen Jesus to his disciples.
Given the past few months of pandemic,
when we have masked our faces and kept our distance,
my initial response to this is a sense of dis-ease
at Jesus’ casual and indiscriminate breathing on people.
But, given the past week,
the reference to breath also puts me in mind
of George Floyd with a policeman’s knee on his neck
for over eight minutes,
who moaned and cried “I can’t breathe,”
until he fell silent, the spirit gone out of him.

During the pandemic shutdown I have tried
to focus on the acts of generosity and creativity
that these difficult days have elicited from people.
Despite the increasing fraying of the fabric of solidarity
in the past few weeks,
I had hoped that perhaps the pandemic
could bring out the best in us,
could point us toward a better future.
But the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis,
following swiftly on the killing
of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia
and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky,
makes such hopes seem like idle dreams,
returning us to the old nightmare
of the persistent racism that has stained our history
as Americans, as a Church, and as a human race.

But what does all of this have to do with Pentecost?
And what does the word of God have to say to us this day?
Today we are offered both a positive vision
of the new world that the Spirit is creating
and a mandate from Christ to live in such a way
as to let God’s Spirit work through God’s people.

The descent of the Spirit in the book of Acts
depicts the power of God
overcoming the divisions sin has created,
as people of different lands and cultures
each hear the good news of God
proclaimed to them in their own native tongues.
Paul, writing to the Corinthians,
reaffirms the power of the Spirit
to forge unity where there had been division:
“in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”
The good news of salvation is not simply
that our sins have been forgiven
or that death has been overcome,
but it is also that God has once more
breathed his Spirit into human clay
and brought to life a new humanity,
overcoming the divisions of race and sex and class
that have structured the world in which sin has reigned.
To be saved is not to be plucked
from this disaster of a world,
but it is to live now a transformed life
in the new world made by the Spirit.

But to say that the Spirit has called forth
a new humanity into a new world
is clearly not enough.
We who claim the name Christian
live with one foot in God’s new world of grace
and one foot in the old world of sin;
we are not yet fully that new humanity
that God’s Spirit would make us.
I am struck how the risen Jesus,
appearing to his disciples,
both speaks the words, “Peace be with you”
and also shows them the wounds of his torture,
as if to say, “The old world of sin is passing
and I have come with forgiveness and mercy,
but don’t forget the cost of following me,
don’t forget the blood and pain through which
this new world must be born.”
To believe truly in Christ’s message
of peace and forgiveness
we must also see the wounds
of torture and oppression.

We can focus so much
on Jesus’ message of mercy and love
that we forget his call to costly repentance.
He says to his followers not only,
“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them”
but also, “whose sins you retain are retained.”
To retain someone’s sin is to hold them accountable.
The ministry of forgiveness
is crucial to the life of the Church,
but so is the ministry of accountability,
the ministry of not glossing over sin
when it shows itself,
the ministry of calling to repentance
so that forgiveness might become possible.
The Spirit consoles,
but the Spirit also convicts and converts.

To receive the breath of the Spirit
people have to be free to breathe it in.
And it is hard to breathe it in
with someone’s knee is pressing on your neck.
It is a testimony to our black brothers and sisters
that they have over the years managed to find ways
to breathe the Spirit in despite the knees on their necks.
And it is a testimony against us who are white
that we so persistently turn a blind eye
to the wounds inflicted on the body of Christ
by the violence of racism.
The too-often repeated cry, “I can’t breathe,”
is a prophetic call to see the ways in which
the Spirit who consoles
is also convicting and calling us to conversion.
May the Spirit whom we receive this day
liberate us all,
and lead us to a more just world
in which all God’s children
are free to breathe the Spirit in.
And may God have mercy on us all.

Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 14:15-16, 23b-26

Jesus promises his disciples that the Spirit
whom the Father will send in his name
will teach them “everything.”
Everything?
That’s a pretty big promise.
I don’t know about you,
but I can’t imagine what it would feel like
to know everything.
My knowledge of quantum physics, for example,
is pretty limited,
as is my understanding of
how my smartphone works,
or why people buy jeans that are pre-ripped.
My knowledge clearly falls far short of “everything.”
But maybe the “everything” that the Spirit teaches
is not this sort of knowledge,
not a collection of facts or insights
concerning this or that.
Perhaps the “everything” that the Spirit teaches
is a truth of such surpassing importance
that it changes everything for those who accept it;
perhaps it is a truth that becomes the lens
through which we view everything else.

St. Paul suggests, in our second reading,
that one way to put into words
what the Spirit teaches us
is to confess that “Jesus is Lord.”
Indeed, he says that no one can truly say
that Jesus is Lord apart from the Spirit’s gift.
When the Spirit prompts us
to proclaim that Jesus is Lord
the Spirit is teaching us that everything,
every aspect of our existence,
finds its center and meaning in Jesus.
In Jesus’ life and teachings,
his death and resurrection,
the universe snaps into focus;
through Jesus we can see things
with a new clarity,
against a new horizon,
the horizon of the love that death cannot defeat
that we have been celebrating in this Easter season.
We see that even in the midst of
violence and conflict,
fear and disappointment,
sickness and death,
there lives, as the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins put it,
“the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
To know this—
to have met the risen Lord,
to have glimpsed the bright wings of the Spirit—
is to have been taught everything,
because it changes everything,
brings everything into focus.
It frees us from fear and gives us boldness
to proclaim to the world the message of Easter hope.

But this message of hope,
this “everything” that the Spirit teaches us,
is not a private possession.
It is a communally held gift.
The truth that the Spirit teaches us
is too vast and all-encompassing
for any single individual to contain.
On the day of Pentecost
the Spirit speaks a multitude of languages
in order that the mighty acts of God might be proclaimed,
the Lordship of Jesus might be confessed,
because no one language can capture everything.
St. Paul tells us that the gifts of the Spirit
are distributed within the body of believers,
in such a way that it is only the entire community of faith
that can truly proclaim that Jesus is Lord.
It takes a multitude to speak what the Spirit teaches;
it takes everyone to say everything.

Some of us, however, might feel
that we have nothing to say.
We might feel that our faith is weak,
our hope is wavering,
our love has grown cold.
But St. Paul says that all of us
who have been baptized into the Spirit
have been given some manifestation of the Spirit,
and that it has been given to us
for the benefit of the body as a whole.
If we are truly to know
the “everything” that the Spirit teaches
then I must tell you what I see
in light of Jesus the risen Lord,
and you must tell me what you see.
I must share with you the way in which
love and joy have fallen upon me
in times of sorrow,
how peace and patience have sustained me
in times of trial,
how kindness and goodness have been shown to me
in times of need.
And you must share with me
how you have found faithfulness
in the midst of doubt,
how you have found gentleness
in the midst of conflict,
how you have found self-control
in the midst of temptation.
We must share our joys and sorrows,
our tales of how we have felt the breeze
stirred by the Spirit’s bright wings,
our stories of how faith has brought us through,
if we are to have even the slightest insight
into the “everything” that the Spirit teaches.
For while we all confess Jesus as Lord,
each of us confesses Jesus as Lord
in our own way,
in our own language,
out of our own lives
and our particular circumstances.
This is what it means to live our faith
as members of the body of Christ,
so that the gift of each becomes the gift of all.
Let us pray on this feast of Pentecost
that the Spirit will be spoken
in a multitude of tongues,
and that we will hear
in the murmur of that multitude
everything that the Spirit teaches.

Pentecost 2008

He breathed on them and said, "receive the Holy Spirit."
He breathed on them, of course,
because the Hebrew word for "spirit," ruah,
is also the word for breath.
And he breathed on them, of course,
because in the beginning God breathed into Adam
and made him a living being,
and so now Christ breathes into them
the Spirit of his own resurrected life,
overcoming the guilt and fear that kept them in a locked room.
The Spirit poured out on Jesus in his baptism —
the Spirit that Jesus drew in, like drawing breath into his lungs —
he now breathes out upon his disciples
so that they too might draw it in,
so that they too might share in his Spirit.

Some of you have probably heard about Caesar’s last breath,
an example commonly used in Chemistry classrooms
to explain molecular diffusion:
The average human breath,
including the last breath exhaled by the dying Julius Caesar,
contains 10²² molecules of air
and the world as a whole contains 10⁴⁴ molecules of air.
Presuming a number of things,
such as a relatively even diffusion of air molecules over time,
and by means of a series of calculations
that my brain cannot quite follow,
we find that there is a 98.2% chance
that at least one of the molecules of air in your lungs
came from Caesar’s last breath.
I presume that this also means that there is a 98.2% chance
that at least one of the molecules of air in your lungs
came from that breath
that Christ breathed out upon the disciples
in the upper room —
a 98.2% chance
that you have taken in his breath, his ruah, his Spirit.

How do you like those odds?
They sound pretty good.
There is a 98.2% chance
that at any given moment we have the Spirit of Jesus.

But of course God doesn’t really leave such things to chance;
the Spirit’s work, mysterious as it is,
is not really like the random diffusion of molecules,
and thanks be to God for that.
Thanks be to God that we don’t have to wonder
if we have a molecule of Christ’s breath in our bodies,
because the Spirit of Christ has drawn us into his body.
As Paul reminds us in our second reading,
"in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body."
All of us here today who are baptized
have been drawn into the body of Christ,
and now live in that place where the Holy Spirit dwells,
the Spirit that fills and gives life to Christ’s body.
But there is more to say about this Spirit, this breath of Christ.
Unlike Julius Caesar, Christ never breathed a last breath.
It is not like Christ
breathed the Spirit out on his disciples in the Upper Room
and has been holding his breath for the past 2000 years.
His body continues to breathe the Spirit in and breathe it out,
diffusing that Spirit in the world.

And we, who have been baptized in the one Spirit,
who through baptism have been drawn
into the one body of Christ,
are breathed out with the Spirit;
we are carried by the Spirit out into the world.
The breathing in and breathing out of the Spirit
is the rhythm by which Christ’s body lives.
From the scattered places of the world —
Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia,
the Philippines, the Netherlands, New Orleans,
Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County,
21217, 21210, 21212 —
we are drawn into unity
and we are breathed out in mission to the world.
Each Sunday, we are drawn on the currents of the Spirit
into the one body of Christ,
the body that we receive at this altar,
and each Sunday we depart
to live the life of the Spirit that we have received.
We are drawn from the scattered diversity of our lives
into the unity that Christ’s Eucharist creates,
and from that unity we are sent out into a new sort of diversity,
the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts,
the Spirit who, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said,
"delights in multitude"
and "lives a million lives in every age, . . .
[who] passes like a restless breath from heart to heart
and is the Spirit and life of all the Church."

Because the Spirit delights in multitude,
the holiness that the Spirit creates
is lived out in an uncountable multitude of ways.
There is no one way to be holy.
The prodigal risk of the vowed religious
is not the same as the persistence of the parent;
the courage of the martyr
is not the same as the careful stewardship of the political leader;
the fervor of the recent convert is not the same
as the sometimes exasperated love for the Church
of the cradle Catholic.
There is no one way to be holy,
but there is one Spirit from whom all holiness comes,
and thus our differences build up
rather than tear down Christ’s body.

If in the diversity of our lives
we live out the unity of the one Spirit
from which we drink at this altar,
then perhaps it will be through us
that those whom we meet in our daily lives
will sense, perhaps only faintly,
or perhaps in very dramatic ways,
the presence of Christ’s Spirit,
will feel the breath of Jesus upon their faces,
and will drink in the one Spirit
and join in that multitude in whom the Spirit delights.