May 14, 2005
Atmosphere
Pentecost Sunday
The Earth’s atmosphere is a thin layer of gases composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and a smidgen of others. Perhaps our most vital activity in return for our lives, together with all the rest of creation, the animals, the plants, is constantly to be at the process of recycling this envelope. For it connects us in an essential and almost intangible ambiance. It has been said to be most like the walls of a living cell
In a remarkably similar way does God’s Holy Spirit wholly contain us. It is there to sustain our lives, create our communities, enable our reconciliation. No wonder that in most languages it is translated as breath. And further, we well remember, that like Jesus told Nicodemus, this Spirit moves, comes, and goes as it well pleases.
Unlike the Earth’s atmosphere, God’s Spirit seems limitless. We, by God’s grace, become the occasions, the stewards to receive and recycle its energy in service to God’s will. We are created by God as such spiritual beings whose vocation is to shape the Spirit as we become human in the way God imagines us to be. Indeed, a case can be made that this life begins with our first breath just as it ends with our last. It is a case with which both pro-life and pro-choice advocates must contend.
Have you ever imagined how a symphony orchestra or a chorus could function if there were no air? The wind instruments, the strings, the percussion, all depend on there being an atmosphere which they can move and shape if there is to be music. So is our mission as churchers to shape Spirit. In the way a symphony orchestra shapes the air around it into sound, so must we take our lives, the instruments God gives us and use them to shape God’s Spirit in service to God and our fellow human beings.
Perhaps one of the most grievous examples of the way we cripple this stewardship is our continuing effort to transfix Holy Spirit in our own interests and not God’s. Of course, the mere thought of such a thing is ludicrous. But not a day passes that we churchers do not strive to fashion and refashion that Spirit in some way so as to warp the gift of Pentecost.
Just as we contaminate the Earth’s atmosphere by our carelessness do we defile God’s Holy Spirit by forcing our identity upon it. Global warming pales beside the toxicity of the church’s current selfish obsession with its manners, morals, and means at the expense of its mission. We must remember on this day that we are not only the community created at Pentecost, we are, as well, the community commissioned for Pentecost. We are Spirit-enabled to become Spirit enablers.
The constellation of propers for this Sunday overwhelms us with this good news. Acts’ accounting of the fire, wind, and apostolic headiness that birthed God’s church (Acts 2.1-11). Paul’s catalogue of the gifts of the Spirit to fulfill the church’s purpose with shape and substance (1 Cor 12.4-13). Jesus’ granting of apostolic ministry by the power of his own breathing, a portend of the Spirit to come (Jn 20.19-23).
This Pentecost Sunday calls us once again to such ministry. “Breathe on us breath of God,” we sing and pray. This Pentecost comes once again to brace and refresh us, to call us back to and enlist us in the Way, the Truth, and the Life revealed in the Upper Room. This Pentecost comes once again to drag us kicking and screaming away from our fascination with ourselves and our need for ecclesiastic security. And this Pentecost comes once again to license us as God’s agent as Mary sang to show the strength of God’s arm, to scatter the proud in their conceit, to cast down the mighty from their thrones, to lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things, to send the rich away empty, and to champion God’s peace and justice and love for all.
Just for openers: It has recently been reported that Wal-Mart’s average fulltime employee is paid no more than $17,000 per year, and that fewer than half have adequate health insurance. In that same news, it was reported that Wal-Mart’s CEO’s annual salary is $17.5 million, more in two weeks than the underlings make in a lifetime.
Four of our bishops recently visited the president of the US&A. It was not so clear what they were doing there or who invited them or for whom they might have presumed to speak. Whatever they were up to, maybe some of us at a different level of grandeur and just to celebrate Pentecost might start with a visit to Wal-Mart’s CEO .