Pentecost 2021 - Year BActs 2:1-21
A long time ago I went on a women’s retreat in Ferdinand, Indiana
And even now after…well over 20 years
I remember a sort of mantra from the weekend
Sr Maria Tasso used it as a kind of grounding backdrop for the retreat:
It was: Welcome…Welcome…Welcome!
On this glorious Sunday
The Feast of Pentecost…the Sunday that begins the season of Pentecost
When we are gathering…Or re-gathering…
from a pandemic that Scattered us in isolation…
That. Theme. Resonates!
Welcome…Welcome…Welcome!
And so let’s pray together
With a heart full of WELCOME:
V. Come Holy Spirit…
Fill the hearts of your faithful
R. And kindle in us the fire of your love
V. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created
R. And you will renew the face of the earth.
On that women’s retreat
What Sr. Maria Tasso was trying to help us see and understand
Was that the Holy Spirit is always there…just waiting to be welcomed
This doesn’t mean that pain and adversity will cease
No…its not magic
But by welcoming the Holy Spirit
We admit that we believe…and even EXPECT her to “show up”!
Why? SO THAT we can be equipped
with what we need to say:
Welcome, welcome, welcome
So that we can welcome life…
in all its beauty and all its difficulty
My bet is that all of us have stories…recollections…memories
That when we call them to mind
When we reflect back
We might say… “that was such a God thing”
take a moment
To call to mind such a time
[Perhaps a time during this pandemic]
Recall a time when in the midst of confusion, or despair even
---a time when you couldn’t see a way out or a way through
And yet…now…you can see it as “such a God thing”
The funny thing is that we can only see clearly when we reflect back
Only in retrospect that we see the whole unfolding
This experience
This time…when…in retrospect, we can say “that was such a God thing”
What happened?
What made it a God-thing?
My guess is that
You had no plan
You were out of answers or solutions
Maybe you had nowhere else to turn
And So…Maybe that’s what happens…we let go
And in that letting go we can then say “Welcome…Welcome…Welcome!”
To the Holy Spirit
In those times we may not have known what we were doing
…but she knew!
And as we welcomed the Holy Spirt
We were able to welcome life…all of it
Because we knew that we were not alone
It isn’t magic---our cooperation is needed
And no doubt…for many of us
There have been many stubborn months, years, mybe even decades
When…whether by pride, ego, or sheer folly
We just couldn’t let go enough to Welcome…Welcome…Welcome! the companionship
of Holy Spirit.
In my work in the hospital
I frequently encountered what I sense is a universal opportunity
An opportunity that most of us have or will encounter
…To welcome the Holy Spirit
When a person is dying family and friends gather
That is just what we do
And rarely is this a perfectly holy situation
It is almost always accompanied by
…whether conscious or unconscious
some amount of regret, estrangement, and unreconciled hurts…
One of two things can happen
Some Families…in my experience most families…find a way to gather
And some families scatter
…in refusal and pride they squander the opportunity
Re-gathering, coming clean, letting go of past hurts,
putting things into perspective…
This is the FREEING work of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit invited and welcomed
Works toward healing and reconciliation…She works to GATHER
Welcome…Welcome…Welcome!
We welcome the Holy Spirit
We believe that she is always ready to “show up”
SO THAT
We can welcome, welcome, welcome all that life throws our way
I love this portrait of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit as invited companion, comforter and guide resonates with the word used in
John’s Gospel: Paraclete
We don’t know how to translate it very well so often it is transliterated, Paraclete
It literally means called alongside
The word has courtroom overtones
As a kind of lawyer for the defense…somebody on your side!
But in the story of the Pentecost event
as told in the Acts of the Apostles
There seems to be a bit more to the Holy Spirit
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are best read as one book with two parts
The story of Jesus and
The story of the Church
And they often mirror each other very deliberately
Jesus says in Ch 11 of Luke’s Gospel
Whoever does not gather with me scatters
Gathering and scattering…
Scttering and gathering
it is a particularly Lukan theme
and it seems to me to be a Pentecost movement
Like the hospital scene I described
The Pentecost event gathers those who have been scattered…
In our story it is the scattered people of Israel
“devout Jews from every nation under heaven”
Scattered and over time…rendered strangers
…they are unable to communicate at the level of language
But more important than the dramatic hearing described in the Acts story
The power of the invited Holy Spirit allows for
A new common language
A language of the heart
A language of forgiveness and healing
This, my friends,
Is the only language that is capable of carrying the Gospel
To the ends of the earth
A language of the heart
A language of reconciliation
A universal language that heals and gathers
Important to the gathering at Pentecost
Is that there are no casualties
This is so KEY
The unity experienced is at the expense of no one
I couldn’t help think about Israel and Palestine
So prevelant in the news this week
This conflict has lasted my whole lifetime
How can it ever work out?
Will there ever be a post-conflict time?
The establishment of a Jewish homeland
Completely understandable in the wake of the atrocities of WWII
Has been fraught with perennial conflict and bloodshed
How can peace prevail when the original price was paid by an unsuspecting people?
People whose land was offered without their say?
The gathering of Israel made causalities of a people…a very resilient people.
I fear it will never end.
By contrast
When the Holy Spirit gathers there is never collateral damage
It is gathering without scattering
It is gathering in order to be sent
We, the people of St Stephen’s
are in the process of re-gathering
I have been hearing the phrase “getting back to normal” lately…and with longing
Here is where the Holy Spirit will discomfort us and challenge us
I feel certain she is hoping for more than “getting back to normal”
She is hoping for better
As we, the people of St. Stephen’s
Begin our regathering
Let’s keep asking the Pentecost question of verse 12
“What Does This Mean?”
What does our regathering mean?
After such a challenging, emotional, painful pandemic
It must mean something more for us than “getting back to normal”
Accompanied by the Holy Spirit
We can do better than “getting back to normal”
We can “get back to better”
Because we are
Strengthened by the memories of the Holy Spirit acting alongside us
Giving us the courage to Welcome, Welcome, Welcome
Because we are
Strengthened by each others’ presence…in the power of the Holy Spirit
Because we are
strengthened by the Eucharist that in the sharing makes of us the body of Christ
for the life of the world.
Because of all this…
We, on this Pentecost Sunday, are getting back to better!
