“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind.” “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues… (People) from every nation… gathered in a large crowd… (and) each one understood them in his own language.”
The new People’s Movement, includes in its beginnings the element of noise, “noise like a strong driving wind.” The word noise has a relationship with nausea, literally “sea-sick.” It is also called motion sickness. Our body is moving but in a manner our brain cannot yet make sense of due to all the sensory information coming into it. It is a disequilibrium; feelings and thoughts that do not yet all belong together. We experience a conflict physically with motion sickness in the inner ear. We can also experience a conflict spiritually with motion sickness in the outer world. Like the community builders at Pentecost, we are currently moving through a motion sickness – trying to move forward as we are made unbalanced. We are made unbalanced on the personal level when moving through a loved one’s suffering unto death. We are made unbalanced on the social level because we are moving through a world of loved ones’ sufferings unto deaths. U.S. social sufferings unto deaths have been given the name, ‘mass shootings.’ We in the U.S. are sick because of them. The world’s social sufferings unto death have been given the name, ‘war.’ War too can be named ‘mass shootings.’ War too kills masses of people in markets, ailing people in hospital, and children in schools. We in the world are sick because of it all. We are so many years being shot at en masse and terrorized with the claimed right of some to do the shooting. We face a Pentecostal moment. We are experiencing a noise and perhaps a sense a nausea or motion sickness coming over us. But the noise is “a strong driving wind” and it is filling us – “with the Spirit.” The Spirit is moving us to come together. Like the early peacemakers who challenged the Roman Empire into its conversion, we can challenge the U.S. Empire into its conversion. We can speak and act in the Spirit of Pentecost so that all humanity hears the one language of peacemaking.
“The difficult I’ll do right now, the impossible will take a little while.” (Paul Rogat Loeb)
Prayer: Spirit, move us in a Pentecostal power.
Question: With whom can I come together to speak and act for peace?
June 05, 2022 Gospel John 20:19-23 Pentecost