Word as Spirit, Spirit as Word

Day of Pentecost   May 29, 2024
Acts 2:1-21  Psalm 104: 25-35,37
Romans 8:22-27  John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Lectionary Link

Would it be too far fetched on this Day of Pentecost to consider Word as Spirit, and Spirit as Word?

Word as the linguistic penetration of all human life in anything being known at all, is the hidden essence of living.  Word as hidden has many evidential products so as to be hiddenly known.

The word Spirit, and Holy Spirit, come to language and "spirit" is a personification of invisible phenomena which have external and visible effects.  Spirit is personified "wind" or "breath."  The wisdom of wind being a macro-equivalent of breath in a person is a fitting metaphor.  Wind is unseen but it manifests itself in visible effects, storms, and blowing branches on trees.  Wind's eroding effects could be seen as creation or alterations in process, and the ancients could proclaim, God's life is breathing in this world, and God's life at large in the world might be called God's Spirit.  We can appreciate wind as a fitting metaphor for God's creative omnipresence whose effects are continuous but only intermittently registered by human beings at various times in their contexts.  The Spirit of God might be called the Divine effect that is and can be known in the lives of people who often confess the coincidences called providence.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is referred to as the Word made flesh.  And Jesus is presented as saying, "my words are spirit and life."  Jesus breathed his Spirit-Words upon his disciples and told them that Spirit would relay his words to them in their futures when they could not seen him.  And the Spirit would speak in and through them.

The event of Pentecost couples Word and Spirit.  What is a supreme issue of difference among humanity?  In the ancient curse of Babel, the curse on the world was regarded to be a poly-glottic humanity.  One humanity but divided into many different linguistic communities.

The curse of Babel came because the previous one language people used their unity to commit the act of pridefully replacing themselves as and for the divine.  So, God cursed them with many languages and the resulting confusion sent them in exile from the land of Shinar throughout the world to be settled in their various linguistic communities.

The event of Pentecost is seen as God's healing of the ancient curse.  In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Unique Word became flesh in Jesus Christ, and the Christ-Word could be translated into every language and so bring the harmony and the humility of diverse peoples having diverse languages being able to overcome the pride of God-replacement tendencies in our ethnocentric practices.

Pentecost is an event when we accept Christ as the Word of God within all language use and language users, as the way to translate the universal accessibility of God to everyone.  Pentecost is when we proclaim that God speaks every language and that God can be translated into every language and cultural situation.

And when God is translated into each life situation, we know it in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit of God: In love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, hope, self control, justice, active care for one another.

Sometimes we limit the Pentecost event to different languages; but no matter what language we speak, the more important language that we speak is our body language.  What is our body code language?  What are our morals and ethics?  How do we act out our good language use with the practice of justice in our world?

Let us regard this day of Pentecost as a language event.  As an event when as Christians we can regard Christ as the image of God upon us being the Word of God within us even as the Holy Spirit making the Word of God communicate through us the good words in speech, writing, and body language, the love of God for our world.  

May God's Spirit today tame our differences into the harmony of respecting diversity while coaxing each person to realize one's importance within the entire symphony of humanity.

Jesus said, "my words are Spirit and they are life."  And today the Holy Spirit says within us, "I am Spirit, and I am the life of Christ the Word of God in you today.  Amen.