From the start, we were encouraged to remember the context from which each of us spoke. The point was clear: we’re informed through our context—our culture, our point of view, our situation.
Pentecost was a Jewish holiday long before it was the birthday of the church, long before the Holy Spirit decided to make her appearance in that upper room. But hardly anyone knows that-- we just assume, from our Christian context, that Pentecost is called that because the Holy Spirit arrived 50 days after Easter. But Pentecost, derived from the Greek for fiftieth day is another name for the Jewish holiday of Shavu’ot which occurs on the 50th day after Passover.
OUR Pentecost context is simply one of many.
So, acting through their Jewish context the disciples have gathered in that upper room on Pentecost, Shavu’ot, to share a meal and utter the familiar prayers of their previous context while adjusting to their new context of a life following a Jesus who was no longer there. Everything was different.
Different is, challenging. Some differences intrigue us, but very often different scares us. We use our context to understand and interpret and when someone behaves in a way unfamiliar to us, when they operate out of a context different from ours, we often become afraid and resistant. It was fear that caused the crowds to shout “crucify him,” it was fear that caused Peter to deny, Judas to betray and everyone but a very few to flee.
Fear is at the root of most of humanity’s worst behavior. Wars and massacres, genocide, discrimination, hatred and exclusion can all be traced back to fear. Fear stems from a lack of understanding, fear comes when we don’t “get” another’s context.
The temple leadership didn’t understand the context of these Jesus followers, and the disciples didn’t understand the context of the temple authorities. Yet, as is often the case with differences, they weren’t all that different!
Jew and Christian alike, as well as Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others, strive for a very similar goal: loving the God of their understanding with all their heart and soul and mind.
Of course, intolerance of differences, fear of unfamiliar contexts isn’t only in our history books—it lives and moves through our life today—as members of this parish, as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, as WNYers, as Americans, as citizens of the world, male and female, white, black and brown, gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, republicans and democrats, Yankees fans, Red Sox fans; misunderstanding one another’s contexts disrupts, erodes and at times destroys our unity.
That is unless…..unless we make room for and listen to the Holy Spirit. That is the point of this day.
On that Pentecost 2000 yrs ago, the disciples were juggling two contexts; the old familiar context of Shavu’ot observance and in their new context of all that Jesus had taught them. They gathered betwixt the old and the new, they gathered unsure of just what their context should be.
It was into this confusion that the tool of tolerance, the tool of insight arrived in that wind blowing, fire burning Holy Spirit.
Once the Holy Spirit entered them, the disciples looked at the world differently, they heard the world differently, they saw each other differently.
And we can too.
I saw it happen this past week as I attended the Consultation on same sex marriage. Some of us want to push the church farther into marriage equality to eliminate the separate and unequal rites of marriage and rite of blessing a life long covenant, others of us don’t want to lose the ground we’ve gained. Instead of forcing our contextual-laden opinions on each other, we prayed together and we listened to the nudgings of the Holy Spirit. Instead of directing the process, we let ourselves be part of the process. Instead of leading the charge, we opened ourselves to let the Spirit lead us to places we never ever thought we could go.
There is great hatred, incredible intolerance, and mounds of fear pulsating through our world. Sadly, WNY was put in the national spotlight of context issues this week with the hate-filled rant of a woman in Cheektowaga. I suppose it’s easy to call her a crazy racist and leave it at that…but such vile behavior comes from some place deep and fear-laden—what in the world was the context of that woman that led to such a place of hate?
We need the Holy Spirit in all that we do, all that we want and all that we hope —we need her Wisdom, her guidance, her fire and her wind to blow into and out of us, leading us into the world, spreading the good news, striving for justice and working for peace.
The good news of today is this:
As suddenly as the gust of wind, as fast as the raging fire, as encompassing as Jesus' embrace, the Holy Spirit is within each and every one of us. And when we let the Holy Spirit have her way us, we will understand one another-- not just those who look like us, not just those who sound like us, not just those who think like us, but everyone.
The Holy Spirit turns the walls of context from stumbling blocks of hate and intolerance and fear into building blocks of understanding, acceptance and Love.
From the crib to the ministry, from the despair of Holy Week to the brilliance of the empty tomb from the discombobulation of the Ascension to those tongues of fire, it all comes down to this ---the Holy Spirit, when given the room to move within us, through us and between us,
will bring us all into that one context of our Creating, Redeeming, Sustaining and always Loving God.
Yes, we have work to do, we have understanding to spread and we have contexts to appreciate. So let’s get busy, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit, Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
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