This week we celebrate Pentecost. On Pentecost we wear red because we recognize it as a celebration of the Holy Sprit. Often this day is looked at by the Christian community as the celebration of the Birth of the Christian Church, though it is not really the birth of the church. That honor goes to an unknown moment, when Jesus bestows upon Peter the mantle of authority,
“And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out. Mt 16:18b.” However, it is not uncommon to find that many churches are commissioned on Pentecost. This is because Pentecost is a celebration of the Holy Spirit. It was a day foretold by Christ when he said: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” Here is one of those areas there our language fails us when reading the Bible. The “Advocate” that is seen in this passage in Greek is “Paraclete.” The Paraclete, which we understand to be the Holy Spirit, is far more then an advocate. She is seen as a wise counsel, a helper, even a comforter. As you see, it is much bigger than a mere advocate. This is also where the day of Pentecost gets both confusing and enlightening. Pentecost was and is one of the traditional Hebrew celebrations. Now called Shavuot by some Jewish communities, this was the festival that was linked to the Law given to Moses on Sinai. It gets its name from being 50 days after Passover. However, while linked to the giving of the law, in practice Pentecost was a traditional celebration of the first harvest. For an agricultural community, this makes the Pentecost a very important holiday. This is where the symbolism converges and we get a really awesome narrative for Pentecost. As I stated above, the Church was established on Peter, but Peter was subsequently tasked with going out into the world to spread the word; the problem was, Peter was unable by himself to do this. Jesus promises the disciples that he will be sending his Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which is part of him, into this world to be our guide. You take that with the significance of the day and begin to see that this Pentecost event where all that are gathered can fully understand the witness and mission of God. As the celebration goes, the spirit supersedes the law, and the harvest is no longer about the fields, but about the people, and the Holy Spirit comes into the world as this ever-present entity, but one that is only seen when a faithful witness is followed. This is why Pentecost is so linked to the church. Not that it is the birth of the church, but that the church might be a place that bears witness to the Holy Spirit, a place were we can witness to the world how the Holy Spirit is alive and active. So next Sunday, wear red to show that we know the Holy Spirit!
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I will start my letter with a bit of a confession: I really do not like the terms “Spirituality” or “Spiritual.” There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which were some folks that I knew who would use spirituality as an excuse to do something that they knew they probably should not be doing, in the case of college, smoking pot!
Interestingly, when I went to seminary my image of “Spirituality” was not fixed. Though people did not use spirituality as an excuse to get high, the spirituality talk was something that focused very inwardly, and was dangerously judgmental. It was like a language of those who were in and got something out of certain spiritual practices and if you did not get anything from it, well, you must not have been blessed. Over the years I have heard terms like “I am spiritual, but not religious.” When I ask people what that means, the response is typically unclear, not in a searching way but as if they did not even understand what it meant. This frustrates me to no end and furthers my dislike for those words. The problem is that words have power and religious words through history have exhorted that power over many people in very difficult and dangerous ways. When we think about spirituality, this becomes even more dangerous because often, because of human nature, we have an intolerance of the fact that different people experience spirituality in vastly different ways. Also, not everything spiritual is necessarily helpful or good (i.e. those in college that got stoned in order to find their spiritual core). The funny thing about the day of Pentecost is that when the spirit comes down upon the crowd, the spirit does so in both equal yet different ways. In that all could hear but in their own tongue and those who spoke did so, without knowing what they were saying. The fact of the matter is that all Christians and arguably all people are spiritual beings. We are guided and nurtured through the spirit and have been given that gift. But, and this is a very big thing, that gift is not all about ourselves; in fact, it is only about ourselves to the point that it frees us from worry and helps us connect to God. But that spirit is far more about how we connect with others and continue to grow in our faith. In other words, spirituality and spiritual cannot be done completely in isolation of a community or based solely on what one individual thinks is good and right. The very simple reason is that we need both the witness of others as well as to share our witness with others. Being honest, my aversion to the words are the words themselves, not what they are really about. Unfortunately, the baggage that is associated makes me reluctant to be open to different spiritualties or even the pursuit of spirituality. After being made to feel inferior because of my different spirituality in seminary, I did not really actively seek out that side of my faith until I accidentally ended up in a spiritual writing class with Barbara Brown-Taylor. Some of you may know who she is; I did not when I signed up for the class, which is strange for Presbyterian Pastors because she is one who has written so much about contemporary spirituality and the church and is well-read in most Clergy circles. Anyhow, through the class and her prohibition of a few words like; Journey, Spirituality, Spiritual, etc., I began to connect in a very direct way to the spirit than I had ever before. It was a special moment, and I really began to understand how the spirit was working in me and how I could connect that with others. It saddens me, though, that it took so long to get to that point, all because of the baggage of those words. The fact is that we are all spiritual and that it is an important connection to God, but like many of our words that has become clichéd through misuse or overuse. We need to reclaim these words so that they can be used as a full expression of the faith we seek. |
AuthorRev. Dr. Bryan James Franzen Archives
September 2018
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