The New Pentecost, by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles, May 23, 2010

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The New Pentecost,

by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles, May 23, 2010

“Humanity is the fruit of fourteen billion years of unbroken evolution, now becoming conscious of itself. ...We did not come into this world—we grew out of it.”                --Michael Dowd 

        Today is Pentecost! It’s a big day in many Christian churches. What – this holiday has passed you by? There are no Hallmark cards wishing us “Happy Pentecost”. And we have no red-suited sleigh-riding saints of Pentecost; no basket carrying Pentecost bunnies. And yet – Pentecost is an important day in both Jewish and Christian religion. In liturgical Christian churches Pentecost is called the Birthday of the Church. Fully half of the church year is a season called "The Sundays after Pentecost” – a season that runs for up to 28 weeks - until Advent begins, four Sundays before Christmas.

        The symbol of Pentecost is the flame. Lighting fires is something we do as together we explore our human souls growing and changing – Big fires outside in the dark; little fires in our chalice; powerful hidden fires inside our hearts and minds as we become aware of something like the spirit. And we try to spot the fires that have been lit across the centuries, like beacon fires on hilltops that we can see from a distance. Today is also Margaret Fuller’s 200th birthday. Unitarians are celebrating this day because this remarkable woman – too long little known – was a fire that can inspire us all if we can see it! Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal, “Margaret with her radiant genius and fiery heart was perhaps the real center that drew so many and so various individuals into a seeming union.” Like Moses’ burning bush, like the lightning on top of Mt. Sinai, the days of Pentecost were what has set religious community afire with a new commitment and new resolve, and brought diverse voices together in common purpose.

        The word Pentecost is from the Greek, meaning 50th day. Pentecost comes 50 days after Easter. But the original “Pentecost” was not the Christian holiday. It was a Jewish Holiday called Shavuot, set on the 50th day after Passover, when the enslaved Hebrews were able to escape Pharoah and get across the Red Sea to the Sinai desert, the Exodus on their way to freedom in the Promised Land. . The reason Jesus had gathered with his disciples for what we now call The Last Supper (Maundy Thursday – before his crucifixion and then Easter) was to celebrate the Passover Seder. And then 50 days after Passover the disciples and many other Jews gathered again in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Pentecost, Shavuot.

        Shavuot is the observance of the giving of the Law by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and over the years it also has become a celebration of the harvest, and the fruits of the season. The Christian Pentecost, some 1,500 years later, is recorded in the accounts in the book of Acts: “On the day of Pentecost all the Lord’s followers were together in one place. Suddenly there was a noise from heaven like the sound of a mighty wind. It filled the house where they were meeting. Then they saw what looked like fiery tongues moving in all directions, and a tongue came and settled on each person there. The Holy Spirit took control of everyone, and they began speaking whatever languages the Spirit let them speak.”

        Both Pentecosts have significance to their faith traditions. For the Jews, it means the giving of the law. For the Christians, Pentecost brought the presence of the Spirit. Both Pentecosts have been observed over the centuries as days to welcome people into membership, because the days mark a kind of initiation of the new era for those people – the Hebrews receiving the laws by which they would follow God, and the Christians receiving the Spirit by which they would continue to follow Jesus.

        Both Pentecosts came to people when they were lost, confused, unsure of their direction, arguing among themselves, afraid that something was very wrong. Both Pentecosts offered the people a sense of unity, across all their differences. Both Pentecosts have to do with the formation of a people – with common story, common understandings, and a sense of identity. This is what helped the Hebrew slaves who had been taken out of Egypt by Moses, to become free people and end their aimless wonderings/wanderings, and establish a nation, a religion. This is what helped the various people who had been brought together by Jesus, people of different tribes and languages, but who were confused and scared following his death, to learn how to be freed and become a Christian church, organized around a common understanding.

        I know I risk being over-simplistic in this summary, and in the thousand years of histories that followed both Pentecosts there remained many diverse strands and struggles and variations. But – we know that after the Pentecosts, there was a way forward, a story that has been told for century, and a vision that was fulfilled.

        Can there be a New Pentecost, one for us now, one that could bring us together and carry us forward in the next era of our common journey? Because, my fellow earthlings, like the Hebrews lost in the desert, and like the disciples of Jesus grieving in despair and confusion at the loss of their leader, I do believe we are at a cusp in history - needing new frames, new paradigms, new meanings to help us out of these disorienting times. The life of our church – and the life of the planet – depends on it.

        We need The New Pentecost. The world needs it. We’ve needed it ever since we’ve felt the longing to find our way in our post-modern world. We are struggling to be freed from the devastating shackles of imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and all the modernisms which have poisoned our planet and our spirits. A new world is coming; we’re just confused about what it will mean. We have a sense, a hope, that there is a promised land, a new paradise, in which we can live freed from the devastations of old. But what can help us get there?

        We’ve been given the Law in the first Pentecost – divinely bestowed to us from a great God fearfully distant above the heights of a mountain. We’ve been given the Holy Spirit, a spirit of love, which can fill us each with a fire to find purpose. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel like enough. So what more do we need?

        In this new era of challenge, we see the faults in all our technologies and in all our human frailties. Our hunger for energy has brought us oil wells that are spewing forth real pollution; and our hunger for spiritual righteousness creates poisons of hatred and mis-understanding among people of different cultures, races and religions. We see the faults and we struggle to find ways to respond. In world and domestic politics, we see polarization and alienation as never before. In this troubled shift from the last epoch into the next, it feels like we are in a desert, in a chaotic place. And it feels like the authority of commandment and of divine love are not enough. What must The New Pentecost give us?

        The New Pentecost must help us find the power to BE, that comes not from a transcendent outside-of-ourself power, but rather that comes from the very elements of this our own universe and planet. We are made of stardust: we are earth and fire and wind and water. We have been in existence since the beginning - taking many different forms and shapes - but still in the soup together. The inspiration which might be the core of this New Pentecost must come from within, is deeper than the Law, and even more basic than the Spirit of Love. The New Pentecost comes from humility and Gratitude - understanding ourselves as part of the earth and universe, as made of earth and universe.

        Gratitude is the response to an acknowledgment of our dependence – on all that came before us, on the planet, on each other’s well-being, on everything that makes it possible for us to be here. Gratitude calls us to acknowledge that every good thing is not ours, but connected and dependent on everything around us, everything before us. Gratitude awakens in us our accountability to the hurts and pains of the people and world around us.

        The first Pentecost, bringing the Law, called us to speak one language; the second Pentecost, bring Love, called us to understand diverse languages. The New Pentecost, bringing humble Gratitude, calls us to invite all the languages, of earth and water, of people and creatures, to seek them out, as if our lives depend upon them. Because they do. Because all of creation is us, and has life and liberation to offer - here among us, not from afar.

        Each Pentecost that comes brings a paradigm shift in times of confusion and disorientation. But fear not! As Dr. Mark Hicks told us in his sermon here in January, new and transformative experiences can pull us “away from a stance of certainty and, in that moment of puzzlement, entertain alternative possibilities for seeing the world differently. It is there, when people don’t see themselves as being omnipotent, that they are most likely to find to consider another perspective and, likely, most capable of knowing what is most Holy in their lives, and in the world.” And catch the fire, and find purpose and direction as a community.

        One more thing. The New Pentecost, bringing deep gratitude and humble acknowledgment that we are a part of this world, dependent on everything and everyone, also means that we are not separate from anything going on - in our church, with our neighbors, in our nation, in our world, with our planet earth. We are not just IN the soup - we ARE the soup.

         When Moses was empowered to get the Hebrews out of Egypt, he parted the waters for them so they could get across to Sinai without getting their feet wet. But you know what? After they received the laws and moved to the Promised Land – they had to cross the River Jordan. Joshua their new leader couldn’t part the waters. So they had to wade through those waters. They had to get their feet WET.

        With our New Pentecost – in this church, in the world - the waters will not be parted for us by a transcendent and separate God. The New Pentecost means - Dependency, interdependency, and gratitude in a multicultural, multiracial, multigenerational post-modern world. It means jump in! Get wet! It’s good to spend time being open to the new and unknown, to hang out with kids and youth even if you are old; to rejoice at trying out new languages and being changed by cultures different from your own; to give up the craving to suck in energy from afar, and instead to use what you HAVE, in your own body, in the dirt around you, in the fires you kindle.

        This is the liberation of the New Pentecost. You do not know what you have been missing until you humbly and gratefully see yourself as a part of, being held by, interacting with everything around you. And to see it, ya gotta jump into it and get wet.

        Maybe if we wade in the waters, swim into the new millennium, we might find our New Pentecost. This lives of our community depend upon all of us, together, joining in. Finding our way and our purpose, so that the world in the future will know our story, and our themes of liberation and justice will still survive. May it be so.

        Happy Pentecost!