This
is a homily exploring what the church
imagines on Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost
is May 27, 2007. That is also the
Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The
names for the Spirit from"Veni
Sancte Spiritus" should be read
with good pauses between.
Gabe
Huck
This day, Pentecost, is the last of
the fifty-day season that began on Easter
Sunday. These fifty days are called"the
Sunday of the year"
because fifty days is very nearly one-seventh
of the year's total length. Easter's
fifty days should be to the rest of
the year what Sunday is to the other
days of the week. Once this meant such
things as no fasting and no kneeling
during Easter's fifty days, just
as no fasting and no kneeling on Sundays
all year round.
The story of the mighty wind and the
flames-like-tongues is presented in
art over and over as the core image
of this Pentecost Day. But that image
of wind and flame, whether presented
as calm or chaos, is but one in an amazing
chain of Images and stories that converge
today.
Even our modest book of readings here
gives some taste of the broader stories
of Pentecost. It provides them as options
to be read at Vigil Masses last night.
If we wish to imagine what this Pentecost
day is about for the church, these stories
offer their own windows to surround
that window with Mary and the apostles
being surprised by a strong wind and
hovering flames.
There is, to begin, the story from Genesis
about the building of a tower. It starts
this way:"Now the whole world
spoke the same language, using the same
words." And in this
"once upon a time," this"time
out of time," the people propose
to build a tower: a human dream that
has never died. They wanted their tower
to have its top in the sky, and they
wanted it to be something that future
generations would see with great wonder.
But after they have been building for
awhile, there is an intervention from
on high. God doesn't knock down
the tower, instead God makes vast confusion.
The people wake up one morning to discover
they can't understand each other's
words any more. God has given them the
gift of an abundance of languages. The
tower project has to be called off because
people can't work together. But
even so, the tower they began is remembered
by the name they gave it, Babel, a word
we still use to describe human sounds
we cannot make out, a baby playing with
sound or the way our ears cannot take
in a foreign tongue.
What's this Babel story all about?
Is it an explanation of why there are
different languages? Is it about our
arrogance, forever thinking we are in
control and can make anything we like
of the world or society? Is it about
what happens when people leave the land
and start cities? Yes to all, plus it
is just a good story. And it is told
at Pentecost to set up its reversal:
that day when people come from many
lands and cities to Jerusalem. These
visitors speak dozens of languages but
when they crowd together to see what
was the sound of the wind and flames
all about, and when they hear what Mary
and Peter and James are saying, they
realize that each person hears in their
own language. It is Babel turned upside-down.
The second story for Pentecost is from
Exodus and it reminds us that Pentecost
didn't begin with Christians.
In the time of Jesus and long before,
this festival of the Jewish people came
fifty days after their festival of Passover.
It celebrated the giving of the Law
at Mount Sinai. We can hardly know our
Pentecost without knowing what the Jewish
people have been celebrating and still
celebrate when they have counted fifty
days from Passover. Listen to Exodus:"Mount
Sinai was all wrapped in smoke, for
the Lord came down upon it in fire.
The smoke rose from it as though from
a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled
violently." And we heard today:"There
came from the sky a noise like a strong
driving wind. . . . Then there appeared
tongues as of fire." Smoke and
fire and the earth trembling, then God
gives the Law in the book of Exodus,
God gives the Spirit in the book of
Acts of the Apostles.
A long time ago Christians started contrasting
these two gifts, the Law and the Spirit,
and that can be interesting. But the
story of Pentecost doesn't oppose
these two, Law and Spirit, it says:
the Law and the Spirit come to us in
similar ways, both gifts of God. And
one is not the opposite or the enemy
of the other. The Law of God is in fact
Spirit-filled. The Law is praised in
our scriptures as our delight, our companion,
our safety, our hope. Never just rules,
it is a way to walk, a way to be with
others, a way to breathe in and breathe
out the very Spirit of God. We could
learn much from praying Psalm 119, a
many-splendored poem to celebrate the
Law as our dear companion given to us
by God.
A third story that Pentecost tells comes
from the prophet Ezekiel and we know
it well: the valley of the dry bones.
In the spirit of the Lord I was taken
to the center of a great open space
and this space was filled with bones.
I had to walk through them to know how
many, how terrible and how many were
these bones. Then the Lord asked me:
Can these bones live? So I called out
to the bones, and there was a sound,
bone joining bone, a rattling of the
bones, and then skin covered them. But
they were not alive. And the Lord told
me to call on the spirit, to call the
four winds to come and to blow and breathe
into these bones and so it happened,
and the bones came alive!
What is this? God tells the prophet:"You
say that our hope is lost, our bones
dried up, we are done for. But I will
bring you back, O my people! And I will
put my own breath, my own spirit into
you!" This is perhaps the truest
story of Pentecost. Maybe it is this
story that helped the church in the
1960s know that the great Second Vatican
Council could be called a New Pentecost.
It seemed like we had been lying like
dry bones in a big hot valley for so
long, and suddenly there was something
moving, suddenly there was wind or breath
whistling around. An old man had become
Pope and he said he was going to open
the windows and let the spirit blow
through the house of the church.
Did John XXIII suspect what would happen?
He spoke of the"prophets of doom,"
powerful folks in the church who never
wanted a window open. And John XXIII
died before it really got going. It
probably would not surprise him that
now we have a sort of counter-Pentecost.
John knew that the rattling of the dry
bones could be a fearful thing. It was
better, some people always say, it was
better when the bones just laid there
all shiny in the sun and quiet. Perhaps
it even happened like that a few weeks
after this exciting Pentecost of rushing
wind and fiery tongues and everybody
from everywhere understanding the apostles.
Maybe a month later some were saying:"OK,
OK, that's well and good, but
we're going too fast! We got to
have some control here!" Of course,
that too will pass and perhaps quickly
if we keep our ears open for the rattling
of the dry bones and the Spirit of God
whispering to our little communities.
So here is Babel, here is the fire and
quaking of the mountain Sinai, and here
is the coming together of the dry bones.
On the other side of the apostles' big
day in Jerusalem there are centuries
and centuries of the church. And here
too people knew that Pentecost wasn't
simply history but possible reality
in their lives and their churches. Some
wrote poems about this. One is the"Veni
Sancte Spiritus,""Come,
Holy Spirit," and it is something
like a litany of what we might call
the Holy Spirit of God. What these poems,
these song lyrics, do is this: They
shatter the walls we build to shut God
in. They give a rainbow of how we might
name God and they invite us: Go on,
continue, keep the poem moving, call
out the way you have met the Spirit
of God.
Here are some of the names for the Spirit
in this ancient poem. Listen to each,
reflect on it for a few seconds in silence,
be ready for the next: Father of the
poor. Our heart's unfailing light.
Consoler. Welcome guest. Sweet refreshment.
Sweet repose. In our labor, rest most
sweet. Pleasant coolness in the heat.
Finally the poet intercedes:"Bend
the stubborn heart and will, / Melt
the frozen, warm the chill." How
else we will begin to know this Holy
Spirit unless we find such words? Give
up the image of the little white bird
at least long enough to let these other
Images of the Spirit become part of
our imagination.
Another of these poems is the"Veni
Creator Spiritus,""Come,
Creator Spirit." It too brings
a spectrum of Images and names. Some
of them are like opposites: the Spirit
is a living fountain of water, but also
raging fire. And the Spirit is anointing,
the health and delight that comes when
we treat our bodies to the oils of plants
and flowers.
More than a hundred years ago in England
the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins added
to these poems. Many of us might remember:"The
world is charged with the grandeur of
God." But Hopkins looks about
and sees what we people have done:"Generations
have trod, have trod, have trod. / And
all is seared with trade . . . and wears
man's smudge, and shares man's
smell. The soil / is bare now, nor can
foot feel, being shod." But always,
always there is hope because there is
the Spirit. He ends his poem:"[T]he
Holy Ghost over the bent / world broods,
with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings." So we are back to the
image of a bird, but now a great mother
bird that hovers and protects and broods
over the world, and warms us with her
breath, and makes a new dawn with her
bright wings.
The stories of Babel, Sinai, dry bones,
and the best Spirit songs of the church
leave us to ponder: Where are our imaginations
now? Why, day by day, in church and
at work and as citizens and as human
beings, why are we so often and so thoroughly
being choked, our breath cut off, by
what is petty, what is dull, what never
sees to the depths of things, what never
rises and sees how truths converge?
We dully become satisfied with a world
that should make us deeply unsatisfied,
should make us hungry and thirst for
change and for justice, because we are
not somebody's helpless robots
going about our daily task, accumulating
our sad wealth, content with what the
media call entertainment. We are children
of this Spirit, we know very well that
we were not claimed by Christ and anointed
by the Spirit in order to disappear
into a petty, sad routine that is choking
off the power of our imaginations, our
ability to see what might be, what should
be, even what truly is!
What then is Pentecost for us? An hour
in a three-day weekend, that weekend
being what really matters in our lives?
Well, the weekend should matter, but
how? Why? And what is the name of this
weekend? Do we dare let the horrors
of war enter the mix of being Christian
in America this weekend? What does that
have to do with what the generations
have done to the earth and its people?
We can make some Pentecost beginnings,
but not in here only. Outside where"the
Holy Ghost over the bent / world broods
with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings."
Copyright © Gabe Huck. Used by permission.
Originally written for Celebration, the worship and preaching resource
of the National Catholic Reporter (visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org).
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