Pentecost: A Day to Confess this Universe as a Friendly Place

Day of Pentecost   May 23, 2010

Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17 

 Lectionary Link

  Today is the day of the Holy Spirit.  Long before the church had used Hellenistic philosophy to institutionalize an official doctrine of the personhood the member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the notion of Spirit was used as the best metaphor for the reality of unseen and mysterious, but very real Life.  How do we know if a person is alive?  They have breath.  If you put your hand under the nose or in front of the mouth you can feel the movement of air.  On a cold day one can see one’s breath because of the water that is present in one’s breath.  Breath is same word for spirit and it is a sign of life.  And how could breath within a person be used in a larger metaphorical sense for life itself?  The entire world is breathing and how do we know?  We have the presence of Wind, an unseen force but a very real force to be reckoned with.  In a storm we see the destructive force of wind; in erosion we see the creative shaping force of wind.  One can easily see how breath and wind became the metaphor for Spirit and sign of invisible but obvious Life.

  In the creation story there is a speaker, a word spoken and an agent of creation.  And that agent of creation is the Spirit.  The Spirit of God, the Wind or Breath of God moved over the face of the Deep, over the Abyss.   I love the appointed Psalm for the feast of Pentecost.  It refers to the creative work of the Spirit in the incredible diversity of Nature.  The Psalmist of the 104^th Psalm was probably one who had some sea experience on the Mediterranean; and don’t you just love the Prayerbook Psalter rendering, “there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.”  One has a sense that the creative Spirit is like a dance choreographer who has devised characters, moves and performances for the joy of the performers and for those who watch.  The Spirit is one who creates the sense of play that we feel is present within the world.  The Psalmist invites us to stop and smell the roses, stop and enjoy the entertainment that is present within life as continuous performance of the Spirit creator.

  What is it that makes human beings different at observing life and nature than the other creatures of the world?  Human beings attain their distinction of existence because of another unseen force that epitomizes human existence, namely our language ability.  Remember in the creation event, there is a speaker and a word spoken. Word is how word users have their world created.  Text seems to make language visible but the language or word ability is the invisible ability embedded in human consciousness which gives us our distinction in perceiving and thinking and extending the kind of control that humans have learned to exercise in this world.

  Jesus said that his words were “spirit and they were life.”  His words were words that invite us to a quality of life that the Gospels refer to as abundant life.  Spirit and word are used as ways to speak about creation and the invisible and yet omnipresence of Word in human experience is literally what creates the human experience and makes us observers of the world in ways that no other creatures do.  

  Because we have Word-spirit life, we interpret the world so that we can interact with the world.  This interaction does not take place in a vacuum; mutual experience is conducted through a marvelous connectivity in this world.  This connectivity is mysterious even as it is just assumed as a matter of fact.  I see you, you see me because there is an entire situation of connectivity that allows mutual experience.

  We as human being have developed our language ability to diversify and to project incredible theoretical understanding of our connections within this world.  In theoretical particle physical we think that with Higgs boson we have discovered an elementary particle of life itself.  We think that we can interpret the presence and meaning of sub-atomic particles and attempt to see what religious people have called “spirit.”

  I believe that what we as people of faith have to add to this equation is how we interpret and project the meaning of how we are connected to each other and with this world.  In faith we project that the connectivity of Omnipresent Spirit has personality.  As human beings with personality we believe that we bestow honor upon everything that we interpret and project upon, the honor of having something like personality, because personality involves the force of relationship.

  Scientists in their realm of study and discourse want to project impersonal forces but a scientist as eminent as Einstein once said, The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”  The friendly place question is the question of religion and faith and it is where we believe that it makes a difference in quality of life if we can project an essential friendliness onto the universe and with an echoing effect believe that what we regard to be the very best about ourselves has come from someone greater than ourselves in every way.  And if personality is part of the greatness of human experience we have derived this personality from the super-Personality of the universe, whom we Christians have come to address as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We do this not to present limiting metaphors for God’s greatness, but at the very least if human personality is a great wonder of humanity then it is not difficult to imagine that we derived human personality from Super-personality. 

  And if what is definitive about humanity is our ability with spirit-word then the entire purpose of spirit-word is to interrelate in very personal ways within an entire community of different beings.  And God is the fullness of community of beings in relationship.

  What is the difference between calling something elementary Higgs boson or the Holy Spirit?  Where is the evidence of a tradition and a community derived from Higgs boson?  Scientists may be able to convince us about this basic elementary particle, but so what?  For two thousand years we have a very personal and friendly force in the world that has been able to replicate and reproduce in successive generation a community of people who have gathered to celebrate the mysteries of the personal but hidden forces of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, patience and self control.  And we cannot see any of these virtues; they are sub-atomic but yet they are evident within a community of people who find that they partake of a personal force who makes these virtues real in experience. And even though they are very inexact in how each person experiences them, they are common enough for people to nod in recognition and agreement when they have experienced this personal force of virtue.

  Today, on this feast of Pentecost we celebrate our faith in how we answers Einstein’s question:  Is the universe a friendly place?  Yes indeed.  Jesus revealed God with a personality accessible to humanity.  Jesus revealed God as a Fatherly person.  But Jesus also revealed God to be personal without having to be limited to the body of a human person.  The physical body of Jesus left this world but the Friendly and Lively Presence of God is celebrated in the Pentecost event.

  At Pentecost there was painful discovery, painful because of the lateness of discovery: My, my God you have always been personally present as Holy Spirit since creation and we are late to discover this reality.  So Pentecost is the day the party began because of the discovery that indeed the universe has always been and is always a friendly place.  In life or death we are going to find friendliness and friendship because of the Holy Spirit as comforting presence.

  Let us continue this party that began two thousand years ago when a group of people discovered that indeed the universe is a friendly place because of the friendly, Holy Spirit.  Amen.