Pandemic Pentecost — love starts in our feet.
--
Nothing about Pentecost is scripted,
And yet here I am — working with a script.
As much as I am a fan of spontaneity,
I have nightmares about preaching unprepared.
What if the words don’t come out right?
What if I ramble or worse — go blank?
What if.
But that’s not how Pentecost works, is it.
Pentecost is about being thrust by the Spirit -
It’s about being led through
Uncomfortable spaces
And being changed.
It is the resurrected Christ
Appearing to the disciples
Saying,
Friends,
I have taught you all I know.
I have given you the best of me.
Breathe of the holy spirit,
Be filled,
And share your gifts
With the world.
I’m thinking maybe Pentecost
Is the Great Holy Ghost that
Sees our fears,
Tells them to shush,
and puts us about
The work of our own healing.
Do you know that feeling?
Pentecost is also a blessing in terrifying times.
Tongues of flame planting fires in
Wounded hearts — gifting them with what they need
To take the next courageous step
Into the great unknown
With nothing but
Intentionality
Love
Hope
Healing
Peace
Justice.
Gifts of the spirit.
Our world needs them.
It needs us.
Pentecost is about Wisdom Sophia spilling forth
Filling a home where bewildered and
Griefs stricken disciples gather
Not yet knowing what to do or say
To cope with their broken world
and Jesus’ absence.
What now? O, God.
The disciples needed Pentecost.
They needed to be swept over
By the Holy Spirit,
Their eyes filled with wonder,
Their skin caressed by the rush of wind,
The touch of the divine
Stirring them from their paralysis-
Moving them into action,
into speech
and miraculous understanding .
Pentecost is a celebration of radical presence.
It’s about identity, connection,
courage to be touched by the spirit
And a compulsion to look beyond ourselves,
Only to find ourselves
In the face of others
Who we may have once believed
To be very different from us.
The miracle
Perhaps
Is a realization that
all of us
Are threaded together
In the mystery of life.
It happens
Especially
When we feel vulnerable
When our God
Our stability
Our hope
Feel lost to us.
We all need pentecost.
We need to gather together and
Feel the movement of the divine
Collecting us,
Connecting us,
and then
Gently plunging us
back into the
Waters of our baptism,
of our being,
and our mutual belonging;
We need it to prod us back
Into remembrance of one another
And our connectedness in this
One wild and precious life -
And we need to hear that
We have gifts to share.
We have work to do.
We do.
We all need pentecost
Just as badly as the disciples did.
We need to know it was not
Just for them.
It was not an act of history.
It is a movement of the Spirit
Witnessed for us biblically -
But aching for our belief
And our participation.
Listen.
Jesus says,
“Peace be with you.”
“As our loving God has sent me,
So I send you.”
Feel the breath of the Holy One.
“Receive the Holy Spirit.”
It is for you, for me,
For humanity.
***
One of the beautiful things about
Divine energy is that it is not self-limiting.
It is relational.
My friend Toby
Reminded me of this
Yesterday.
I was late to watch
His midweek message,
But delighted all the same
By his characteristic
Honesty and open-heartedness
And ability to give a soft-landing
To hard-won wisdom.
He gave me reason to
reconsider how the spirit in the
Gospel whirls around people’s heads,
And instead he made me think about
My feet.
The biblical Spirit of Pentecost
Descends from heaven -
It reaches out like
Tongues of flame,
Pours out
Like baptismal waters,
And disciples drink of it
Like the very
Cup of Life.
But Toby described
A holy experience
Ascending
From the ground up -
And I think it’s a message we need.
He said,
“In a way
we are vessels
That are able to put out into the world
Through our words
energy
And love is an energy.
I know that when I send love to people
And I express it and share it with people
It is a helping, spiritual salve…
The cool thing is that I imagine
That as I’m letting it go from my body
It’s almost as if it starts way down in my feet.
Love starts way down in my feet.
And it has to travel up my knees, and my thighs, and my body,
And maybe trickles out to my fingers,
But it keeps going up and building and building and building
Until it moves through my vocal chords,
And I shoot it out into the world and it
Does good things.
But as it had started from my feet
And built up and traveled up through my body
It left remnants of that good powerful energy
Throughout my entire body -
It does that both physically
And Spiritually.”
The words of a modern prophet.
Toby can preach.
I’d like to think of that Love he talks about
As a groundswell — one that each of us
Can tap into -
Pause,
Take a breath,
Pray: Come, Spirit, Come,
And feel it rise through our feet
Up through our calves,
Our knees,
Our thighs,
Our hips,
Our chest,
Maybe trickle out through our fingers
As it pushes its way out
Through our breath
Releasing Love
Into the world -
And healing our bodies
At the same time.
At least that is my prayer for us
This pentecost.
For us, and for all who suffer
And who are in need of hope.
For everyone who feels
Paralyzed by the grief
And horrors of the world
Cycling before our eyes
And ringing in our ears
Affecting our minds and bodies
Our communities,
Our cities,
As perhaps we wonder -
Where is God?
In the midst of the terrors of
This pandemic pentecost,
May we remember the
Disciples were scared, too.
They had locked themselves in,
But Jesus lovingly called them out.
This is our Pentecost, too.
May we feel the groundswell
Uniting us in solidarity,
One people,
One earth,
One love.
Yearning to be whole.
Listen.
Jesus says,
“Peace be with you.”
“As our loving God has sent me,
So I send you.”
And remember,
As a wise man
Of our own times once said:
Sometimes,
Love starts in our feet.
[Preached at Brownsburg Catholic Community’s virtual mass on 5/31/20]
