Today is Pentecost1 Sunday, which is basically the birthday of the Christian church. The book of Acts (The Acts of the Apostles2 ) tells the story of the followers of The Way, which later grows into the Church. Luke/Acts should be read as two parts of one story, as the author is widely accepted to be the same for both books. At the end of Luke’s gospel, the disciples were told by the resurrected Jesus to return to Jerusalem and stay “until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)
At the beginning of Acts the disciples are doing just that, waiting together in the same house, when suddenly a “sound came from heaven like the rush of a violent wind” and then “there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.” (Note the qualifiers — like the rush of a wind, tongues as of fire.)
Pnoe is the Greek word used, meaning breath or wind. And, yes, I believe we are to feel the vibration of the plucking of the thematic string of the breath, wind, Spirit, ruah (Hebrew word) of Yahweh Elohim brooding over the waters at Creation in Genesis 1.
The Greek word for tongue, as in tongues of fire, is glossai. And, Acts says, then “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Greek: pneumatos hagiou) and began to speak in other tongues (glossais). Out in the streets of Jerusalem are “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” When the newly-minted apostles began to loudly proclaim about Jesus, everyone heard and understood in their own language.
Genesis 11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel when “the whole earth had one language” and cheeky humans planned to build “a tower with its top in the heavens” leading God to nip that hubris in the bud. For, “this is only the beginning of what they will do,” so God confused their language and the people scattered.
Thematically, in the story of Pentecost, there is a complete reversal3 of that scattering, and we see instead an ingathering, a language of good news that unites.
But more than that, we see a new Creation, the whole love story blown wide open. Reading through the rest of Acts, you see the promises of Jesus extended to all of humankind.
Okay, what part of all this do I believe? What part informs the raggedy thing that I tote around with me that passes for faith, that like a worn and tattered blanket from childhood I can’t quite seem to give up?
What I can tell you is, I’ve seen wondrous things happen, both inside and outside of my church life, leaving me with the clear sense of Something at work. Probably why Luke is my favorite gospel (did I ever confess that before now?) is that more than any of the other three, Luke speaks most about the Holy Spirit, that wild, free thing that is the dynamic, the power, the energy of the whole God enterprise.
Think all the way back to Genesis 2, when Yahweh Elohim breathed Their own breath into ha-adam (literally, the earth creature) and suddenly he went from being a lump of clay to being made alive. I see the Church in the same way, that in this re-creation the same wind/breath/spirit that brooded over the waters in the beginning and that same wind/breath/spirit that fell upon Jesus when he was baptized and that same wind/breath/spirit that Jesus surrendered on the cross is the same wind/breath/spirit that came over those who waited to see what would happen next and formed them into this new Body that was to — that is to — take the story of Jesus and the love of Jesus and the healing power of Jesus and the kindness of Jesus and the righteous anger of Jesus and the power of Jesus and the friendship of Jesus and the justice of Jesus everywhere to everyone.
And…I don’t attend any church. I think about it a lot, I do. I just can’t seem to find my footing. I’m not really sure where I’d fit in anymore. I will say that whenever I do attend, I look for communion to be part of the service, and when I receive it I weep. Every time, something wells up inside me. Hope, I guess, of what we could be and do together. Or a kind of homesickness, perhaps, for a belonging I no longer feel. It’s a journey. I’m not done yet.
And…there is also this.
For years, practically since my ordination in 1993, I’ve followed the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr (Treat yourself to this stellar 2020 piece in the New Yorker, “Richard Rohr Reorders the Universe.”) I love how “outside the box” he has always been, how he looks for what connects and unifies rather than what divides. I moved to Albuquerque in late December of 2019 in part to be close to his Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org) there, having attended his CONSPIRE conference in 2018. (The conference was held at a big hotel and I stayed at an Air B&B about a mile away and walked to the daily presentations, and that’s when I fell in love with ABQ, a smoldering torch I still carry, even though I’m back in the mountains of North Carolina.)
Back to that New Year’s Day of 2020. Not yet settled in to the house I’d be renting, I drove over to the CAC hoping to walk the labyrinth there, a practice of imaginary untangling and reweaving I try to do on the first day of the year no matter where I am. I couldn’t wait to see the place. It seemed such a powerhouse of ideas and exciting theology, and I wondered what the center would look like. A gleaming building of glass and steel? A brick edifice? Big things were happening there!
I should have known better. The small, modest, adobe style compound is located on a side street in one of the poorer areas in the city. The CAC is part of this neighborhood, woven into the lives of their neighbors not as occupiers of property but as loving friends who are there to help and support, to love and be loved.
The center was closed that first day of 2020, and the labyrinth was behind a locked gate, so I turned off my car and rolled down the windows and sat for a while breathing in the clean January air, grateful for the radically wide-open work being done in this place.
To be honest? I toyed with the idea of inventing a Pentecost drink for today that I’d call the Cosmic Christ. It would have involved something like coconut cream and edible glitter and some kind of spirits and maybe a drop of a faintly floral enhancer, and we’d sip it together on the Treehouse’s wide screened-in porch, relaxed in our comfy old overstuffed chairs with the wide view spread out before us.
But I’ve realized a Cosmic Christ libation should be the simplest, clearest possible thing, like ice-cold spring water that’s just bubbled up from deep in the earth, sharp on the tongue with minerals, then laced with a fragrant sprig of mint or bright slice of lime. And after clinking our glasses and toasting to the power of Love to heal and unite and mend and remake this broken world, what we really need to do is climb down out of this tree and get to work.
Next time: a summation of my Constructive Theology as I hold it today, and a little bit about Process Theology.
Pentecost means fifty, the number of days after Passover that marks the Jewish feast of Shavaut when Moses was given the Torah on Mt. Sinai. The Christian celebration of Pentecost takes place fifty days after Easter.
Remember, whoever wrote Luke wrote Acts, too, so the books should be read as two parts of a whole. It’s where disciples become apostles. What’s the difference? Disciples were witnesses, the first-hand people (the Greek word for disciple is martyr, which translates as witness). Apostles (Greek word apostolos, meaning one who is sent or messenger)
A reminder that Luke is all about reversal — Mary’s Magnificat and Luke’s version of the Beatitudes are two examples.
I love the graphic at the beginning of this piece. I would love to get together while you're in town. Can we make that happen?
Rohr is a favorite! Wonderful idea for a soothing drink-- Cosmic Christ libation