The Great Fifty Days of Easter reach their climax today. The same group of women and men who had cowered in fear and denied and betrayed Jesus have now become bold and effective witnesses. What has transformed them? The events from [Maundy] Thursday evening until [Easter] Sunday evening revealed the power of love, first from God to us through Jesus and now from all who have been transformed by that love to others.
“What gives the resurrection its depth, however, is the life led by those who believe it.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Koder Diaries, p. 147
- Acts of the Apostles 2:1-21
The Jewish Feast of Pentecost would have drawn pilgrims from all over the world to Jerusalem fifty days after Passover to give thanks to God for the event when God spoke and gave the Law to the Hebrews on Mt. Sinai. Luke’s account of the first Pentecost after the death and resurrection of Jesus places all the disciples of Jesus gathered, still in Jerusalem, in the room which had beocme customary meeting place. Suddenly, they are engulfed by powerful winds that fill the room where they are gathered and “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” This spectacular event, with all its reminders of the original event on Mt. Sinai, precedes another spectacle that startles the disciples, as well as those attracted to the wondrous event. These working-class followers of Jesus from rural Galilee “began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability….” (About the original event on Mt. Sinai, Philo, 20 BC-30 AD, the Jewish philosopher wrote of the original Mt. Sinai that angels took God’s words and carried them to all people on tongues.) Peter addresses the crowds attracted to the spectacle of hearing their native language spoken by these Galileans. Citing the prophet Joel, Peter characterizes these current events, including the death and resurrection of Jesus, as signs of a new outpouring of God’s spirit. This new movement will reach those traditionally not included– slaves, men and women, the young and the elderly. In short, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved…”
- OR Ezekiel 37:1-14
A poet prone to visions, Ezekiel finds himself in a valley littered with the bones, baked by the glaring sun, of fallen fighters for Israel. He lives in a time when the humiliated, defeated King and people of Israel had been marched off to exile. Ezekiel’s vision only needs re-telling, on our part, rather than any intricate over-interpretation. It is the poet-prophet’s wonderfully vivid way to declare that new life, even standing in the middle of the remains of past defeat, death and destruction, is possible!
- Psalm 104:25-37
Robert Alter understands Psalm 104 as a poetic riff on the (Priestly) creation story in Genesis. Alter reminds us that in Hebrew, the term translated as human “breath,” (v.29), equally means “spirit” or “breath.,” as when God’s breath breathes life into being. (The Book of Psalms, p.367)
- Romans 8:22-27
In his powerful letter to the church in Rome, Paul offers encouragement and interpretation. Like “the whole creation,” we also “groan” as we wait “adoption.” In this meantime, we rely on hope, “For in hope we are saved.” And, we pray, aided by God’s Spirit, who “intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” we can learn how to express ourselves.
- John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
In John’s gospel narrative, the last supper Jesus has with his disciples is the occasion for him to prepare them for the time when he will no longer be with them. In this long discourse, from which we have been reading throughout the Great Fifty Days of Easter, Jesus provides specific assurances and then surprises them with hints that even more is to come! Of today’s appointed excerpt, Raymond Brown writes: “Here we touch on a major emphasis in the Johannine presentation of the Paraclete: the likeness of the Spirit to Jesus enables the Spirit to substitute for Jesus.” “Both come from the Father; both are given by the Father, or sent by the Father; both are rejected by the world.” “When Jesus has gone to the Father, whoever listens to the Paraclete will be listening to Jesus.” “In one extraordinary passage (16:7) Jesus says that it is better that he go away, for otherwise the Paraclete will not come. In what possible sense can the presence of the Paraclete be better than the presence of Jesus? Perhaps the solution lies in one major distinction between the presence of Jesus and that of the Paraclete. In Jesus the Word became flesh; the Paraclete is not incarnate. In one human life of Jesus, visibly, at a definite time and a definite place, God’s presence was uniquely in the world but then returned to the Father. However, the Paraclete’s presence is not visible, not confined to any one time or place. Rather the Paraclete dwells in everyone who loves Jesus and keeps the commandments, and so his presence is not limited by time [emphasis added] (14:15-17.” Not only is Jesus’ departure necessary, it enables more of God’s work in the world! Brown continues: “The Johannine Jesus had many things to say that his disciples could never understand in his lifetime (16:12); but then the Paraclete comes and takes these things and declares them (!6:15). In other words, the Paraclete solves the problem of new insights into a past revelation.” (Once and Coming Spirit at Pentecost, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994, pp 73-74)
These appointed readings and today’s gospel are underestimated! They make breathtaking, somewhat disturbing, assertions. They promise that God’s greatest work in the world was not in the past, but in the present and the future! They insist that not only those best prepared, but as likely, those not usually regarded as good enough to do God’s work in the world, will be enabled and authorized to speak and act effectively and successfully in God’s name! They relieve the usual anxieties about who or what is “adequate” now that Jesus is gone and offer instead a community of followers– the church–in which together all have some parts of the consensus to not just speak but to also act successfully in God’s name!
In The Call and The Response, Jean-Louis Chretien draws out of the original Sinai event and then its twin, the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, an apt insight. These occasions, he writes, show us that “what is supremely invisible manifests itself by giving speech to the apostles….” (p.41) Those who had nothing to say except the usual banalities people exchange in everyday conversation now become articulate and effective in a new language that gets things done, specifically things that God wants done in the world, which are the same things Jesus did personally in his short time in the world. Speech remains a mystery, but there is no longer any mystery about the power of its possible uses.
The meme of God’s spirit plays a crucial role in biblical narratives. She/he spread over the creation. God bends over figures formed from mud and breathes spirit into them. She/he initiates covenant and then establishes a community of followers without any confines of time or place. She/he gives them a new language that re-creates the fruits of the spirit among all who accept its gift and share it into the future.
In The Way of Love, Luce Irigaray meditates on “air” this way:
Air is what is indispensable to live, to grow, to speak– to each one, man or woman, and to a relation between two [people] not dominated by one or the other. Air allows modulating sounds, speaking with different tones, and also singing, crying, or whispering, shouting what seems already evident or keeping the breath for a future manifestation. Respecting the air between us and drawing from it in the present a part of the flesh of our words grants an approach that nourishes the existence of each one, that allows each to be and to become. Air is the medium of our natural and our spiritual life, of our relation to ourselves, to speaking, to the other.
And just before these beautiful excerpts, Irigaray has made the key observation that the space, the air between us is a “transcendence,” “which is fecund in graces and words….” (pp 66-67)
The spectacle of Pentecost is not that ‘Something’ from outside the world interrupted/penetrated human experience, but that the miracle of human speech was made new! Each person speaks in her or his own voice, the church speaks with the raucous babble of community. The new conversation is about God, us and all others in a new light. It is the same words and deeds Jesus did in his day that we say and do now! “…The Paraclete now dwells in everyone who loves Jesus and keeps his commandments….” “…The air between is is a ‘transcendence’….” God’s greatest work is still to come!